Hardly a Husband Read online

  "Weren't you angry?" Sarah asked.

  "I was furious at him for not returning my love and for making me feel inadequate. But most of all, I was furious at myself for wasting all those years turning myself inside out loving someone who didn't want the love I offered and who blamed me for his own failings. When your mother became ill, I was glad to be able to move into the rectory and help your father take care of you. You are my sister's child, but you're the daughter I dreamed of having." She smiled at Sarah. "My anger died with Calvin. If I have any regrets, it's that I was completely faithful to Calvin from the day I met him until the day he died. I wish I had had the courage to approach the man I wanted and ask him to be my lover."

  "It's not as simple as it sounds," Sarah warned. "It's embarrassing to ask and even worse when they refuse." She looked at her aunt. "And Lord Shepherdston flatly refused to do as I asked."

  "Of course he did," Lady Dunbridge said. "You're an innocent and he is a man of honor."

  "You haven't seen him in ages," Sarah reminded her aunt. "How do you know he's a man of honor?"

  "That's simple," Lady Dunbridge replied. "If he weren't a man of honor, you would no longer be innocent."

  "I went to him because I no longer wanted to be innocent," Sarah protested.

  "You went hoping that if you offered yourself to him, he would fall to his knees, declare his love, and beg you to marry him — and you would have your heart's desire."

  Sarah's mouth fell open. "How did you know?"

  "I've lived with you long enough to know that you're a hopeless romantic. I never told you the entire truth about my marriage because I wanted you to hold on to the dream of a great romantic love for as long as possible. I wanted you to have what you wanted. I hoped a young man would come along and sweep you off your feet and that you would be loved and cherished and protected, but that won't happen until you get Lord Shepherdston out of your heart."

  "I don't want him out of my heart," Sarah protested.

  "What if he doesn't want to be there?" Lady Dunbridge asked quietly. "Love can be a curse as well as a blessing. Believe me, I know. Loving someone who doesn't love you in return is miserable. And being loved by someone you don't love in return is equally wretched. You have loved Lord Shepherdston with the purity and passion and honesty of an innocent child for most of your life. But you're a grown woman now and adult carnal love is rarely as pure and honest as the love of a child. It's passionate and messy and until you experience it, entirely beyond your ken."

  "I don't intend to go to my grave without ever having spent a night in Jarrod Shepherdston's arms," Sarah insisted.

  "Can you settle for one night?" Lady Dunbridge questioned.

  "It wouldn't be just one night."

  Lady Dunbridge pursed her lips in thought. "Suppose it was. Suppose you had your night of passion and he still didn't love you? Can you spend the rest of your life watching him live his life without you?"

  "No." Sarah got up from her chair and dropped her forgotten sampler on the cushion. "Because I know he loves me. I know that we're meant to spend our lives together. All I have to do is prove it to Jays."

  "How are you going to manage that?"

  "I have no idea."

  Lady Dunbridge smiled. Sarah had always been loyal and stubborn to a fault. Once she had her heart set on something, she didn't let go until she achieved her goal. And Sarah had her heart set on marrying Jarrod Shepherdston. Unfortunately, he appeared to be as stubborn as she was. "Let's see what he wants." She broke the seal on the note and read it aloud. "Lady Dunbridge: I request permission to call upon your niece — "

  Sarah's heart began to race. Was it possible Jarrod had changed his mind?

  " — to discuss her present plight," Lady Dunbridge continued. "As we require a chaperone, I ask that you join us promptly at one o'clock this afternoon at the ladies' breakfast at your hotel. Shepherdston." Lady Dunbridge finished reading the note, then handed it to Sarah so her niece could read it for herself. "I certainly hope that's not Lord Shepherdston's idea of a love note."

  Sarah read the note, then folded it in a small square and tucked it in the bodice of her dress above her heart. "Me, too." She giggled in spite of herself. "But I'm keeping it. Just in case."

  "Well" — Lady Dunbridge rubbed her palms together in anticipation — "now that we have a time and a place to start, we must decide how best to proceed."

  "You're willing to help me?"

  "I'm willing to help you," Lady Dunbridge assured her, "so long as helping you consists of making Lord Shepherdston believe you've chosen to become a courtesan. Because I refuse to help you become one."

  "I don't want to become anyone else's mistress," Sarah said. "I only want Jays to believe I would."

  "All right," Lady Dunbridge said. "If that's what you feel you must do in order to gain his undivided attention, I suppose I might have an old friend or two in London willing to help you give a good imitation of it."

  * * *

  Chapter Eleven

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  Believe one who has proved it.

  Believe an expert.

  — Virgil, 70-19 B.C.

  Jarrod arrived at Colin and Gillian's town house at 21 Park Lane at a quarter past nine that morning. Britton, the butler, greeted him at the front door. "Good morning, Lord Shepherdston. May I say that it's a pleasure to see you again?"

  Jarrod took off his hat and coat and handed them to Britton. "Thank you, Britton. It's a pleasure to see you again."

  "Lord and Lady Grantham are expecting you, sir. They're waiting in the breakfast room." He stepped back to allow Jarrod to enter, then closed the front door and led the way to the breakfast room.

  "Jarrod, come in." Colin stood up and motioned Jarrod to the table. "Pour yourself a cup of coffee." Colin nodded toward the sideboard. "Have you had breakfast?"

  "I'm fine," Jarrod replied, even as his rumbling stomach betrayed him.

  "Won't you please take a few minutes to eat something, Lord Shepherdston?" Gillian asked as Colin walked over to the sideboard and began to fill a plate from the variety of breakfast foods warming in the chafing dishes. "Colin and I have spent most of the morning going over the documents he brought home. We were just about to sit down to breakfast ourselves." She smiled at Jarrod. "We'd be pleased to have you join us."

  Jarrod glanced around the room, looking for a clock, and found one on the marble mantel at the far end of the room. "I've appointments at the War Office at ten."

  Gillian looked down at the elegant jeweled timepiece pinned to the bodice of her dress. "Please accept our invitation to breakfast and trust that we won't allow you to be late for your appointment."

  "You might as well give in gracefully," Colin advised Jarrod as he carried his wife's plate to the table and set it down in front of her, then went back to the sideboard and picked up another plate. "It's a matter of courtesy. You're a marquess. She's a viscountess. She won't sit down to breakfast unless you join us," Colin continued. "Gillian's hungry. I'm hungry, and judging from the rumbling in your stomach, I'd say you're hungry. So stop being an arse and sit down. We can talk while we eat. I'll serve your plate. What will you have? Eggs? Sausage? Kidneys? Kippers?"

  Jarrod sat down. "I'll have whatever you're having."

  Colin nodded and began piling the plate full of food.

  "Coffee or tea?" Gillian asked, reaching for another cup and saucer.

  "Coffee," Jarrod answered. "No cream or sugar."

  Gillian filled his cup from the silver coffeepot and handed it to him, then poured more tea for herself.

  Colin delivered Jarrod's breakfast and went back to the sideboard, where he filled a plate for himself. He carried his plate back to the table, sat down beside his wife, and began to eat.

  Jarrod placed his napkin in his lap, picked up his fork, and attacked the food on his plate, spearing a forkful of eggs. "Excellent." He looked at Gillian. "Thank you for breakfast and for your hard work."

 
"It isn't difficult work," she told him. "Just tedious."

  Jarrod begged to differ. He'd seen any number of men fail at code breaking. But Colin's wife succeeded time and again with seeming ease. "Were you able to accomplish much in the short amount of time I gave you?"

  "Quite a bit," Colin answered, "considering."

  Jarrod quirked an eyebrow in query.

  "We enciphered the dummy letters for the couriers to carry back to France using a mix of old codes and newly created ones." Colin smiled at Gillian.

  "Oh?" Jarrod asked.

  "They're quite convincing," Colin told him. "They'll fool everyone except the most dedicated code breakers."

  "We composed them as a mix of all clear and code," Gillian said, "and made it possible to decipher bits and pieces in order to whet their appetites." She smiled, clearly relishing her role in helping defeat the French. "Then we entered meaningless codes after the closing."

  It was British policy to enclose false messages along with the real ones in the military dispatches the couriers carried back to their commanders in the hopes that if the couriers were captured, the information they carried would confuse, rather than help the enemy. Commanding officers in possession of key codes were the only people able to differentiate between the false and the real documents and only because Scovell, Colquhoun, and their most trusted network of spies and messengers — including the Free Fellows — delivered the key codes and cipher tables separately. They knew the French had a similar policy. Original cipher charts rarely fell into enemy hands and most of the information they obtained from captured couriers proved useless when deciphered.

  "But they should keep them busy for a while," Colin said.

  "What about the dispatches I was deciphering?" Jarrod asked.

  "We completed the deciphering on all but the one written entirely in code," Colin reported.

  Jarrod knew the letter he meant. Because ciphering took time and a certain level of skill, most letters contained a combination of French and code, where only the most sensitive information was written in cipher. Since they'd begun work deciphering, the Free Fellows had discovered almost all battlefield missives contained more French than code. Political dispatches, letters outlining battle strategy and specific plans, and any messages detailing Bonaparte's movements were more code. And the French Grand Chiffre, or Grand Code, had proven extremely adaptable and difficult to break. Of the half dozen letters in the dispatch, only one had been written entirely in code. Jarrod spent a good deal of time on that letter and had been working on it when Sarah had arrived. He'd locked it in his desk drawer where it had stayed until Colin had retrieved it after the Free Fellows meeting. "Any luck at all?"

  Colin ate a bite of sausage before answering. "We know it's from King Joseph of Spain to one of his subordinates. But we don't know which subordinate."

  "Unfortunately," Gillian added, "a king is surrounded by nothing but subordinates. We've been forced to go down the list of those whose names we know and that takes time."

  "You've uncovered more information than I was able to discover," Jarrod told them, pleased with the progress they'd made.

  "Because your cipher table is incorrect," Gillian told him. "The code has changed since our last batch of intercepted mail. I took the liberty of correcting several deciphering errors in the letters you deciphered."

  Jarrod arched an eyebrow in query.

  Colin grinned. Because he was the leader of the League, Jarrod liked to think that he was better at deciphering French code than the other Free Fellows, but the truth was that although Jarrod was good, Colin had a more complete grasp of the French language and Sussex was better at deciphering, and Gillian was faster and more accurate than any of them and much better at discerning changes in numerical code. "The changes are subtle, but there are definite changes since we deciphered the last batch of dispatches." Colin reached for a leather pouch on the seat of the chair beside him, pulled out several sheets of paper, and handed them across the table to Jarrod. "See for yourself. Gilly made a list of the changes and copied new cipher tables for the men who will need them."

  "It looks as if it's a code within a code," Gillian pointed out. "A complicated numerical code hidden within a simpler one."

  Jarrod frowned. "From Joseph to one of his subordinates? Were you able to break it?"

  She shook her head. "I've deciphered some of the words, but not enough to understand the content."

  Jarrod studied Gillian's corrected cipher sheet. "The complex code must mean something. But what?"

  "The code is more complicated. There are strange gaps in it of varying lengths with numerals inserted in a seemingly random manner. But there's nothing random about them. Look." Gillian pointed to a numeral in one section of code, then a second numeral in another section. "When we combine the numerals in the different sections, we get a very large number." She jotted down the numbers. "But that's only part of the pattern. All of the different elements mean something. Otherwise, why change the code? There's a pattern, but I haven't learned what it is yet."

  Jarrod took another bite of his breakfast, then pushed his plate aside and spread the deciphered messages out in front of him. "Five thousand here." He pointed to one notation. "Eleven thousand here." He looked at Colin. "Have we intercepted treasury information? Are we looking at francs or pounds? There are no references to any military commanders or military encampments." Jarrod slapped the sheet of paper with his hand. "For all we know, King Joseph" — he sneered at the title Bonaparte had bestowed upon Joseph when he'd overthrown the rightful king of Spain and installed his older brother as His Catholic Majesty — "could be ordering supplies for a dinner party. Five thousand casks of wine. Eleven thousand pearl buttons. Fifteen hundred crystal goblets."

  Colin nodded. "I agree. So far, the only thing I know for sure is that we aren't talking about ships or cargo." He winked at Gillian. "I've learned quite a bit about the shipping business in the past year, and there are no references to any seaports currently held by the French or their allies or any references to any of the trade routes we know the French use."

  "Or to any known port of call," Gillian added, "French or otherwise."

  Jarrod pointed to the cipher chart. "What are these?"

  Gillian grimaced. "Abbreviations."

  "Yours or theirs?" Jarrod asked.

  "Theirs," she replied, taking a sip of her tea.

  "Any idea what they represent?"

  "I think the abbreviations are parts of words inserted at random intervals to confuse would-be interceptors." Gillian wrinkled her brow as she looked at the messages once again. "I'll figure it out." She looked at her husband and then at Jarrod. "All I need is a bit more time."

  Jarrod smiled at Gillian. "Don't frown so, Lady Grantham, you've done the job of half a dozen men in less than four hours."

  "I despise not knowing the answers," she admitted. "The puzzles nag at me until I can't think of anything except solving them."

  "You mustn't let that happen," Jarrod teased. "You must think of yourself and of your husband, else he'll force me to seek help in other quarters."

  "He wouldn't dream of being so selfish," Colin contradicted his friend. "Her talent is much too valuable to our cause."

  "Indeed." Glancing at the clock on the mantel, Jarrod drained his cup, removed his napkin from his lap, and placed it beside his plate. He pushed his chair back from the table, then gathered the deciphered letters and the new ciphering charts, folded them in half, and tucked them inside a secret pocket sewn into his jacket. He looked at Colin. "Will you see that the leather pouch and the dummy letters are returned to Lord Weymouth?"

  Uniformed couriers carried military dispatches from London to the front, but spies secreted messages written on scraps of paper everywhere. At home in London, Jarrod settled for secret pockets sewn into his clothing. Leaning forward, he brushed Gillian's cheek with his. "Thank you once again, Lady Grantham, for breakfast and for sharing your extraordinary talent. The gentlemen in the War Of
fice will be pleased."

  "I'll see you to the door," Colin told him.

  Gillian understood. There were secrets Colin could and did share with her, such as the deciphering, but there were secrets he couldn't share with anyone except his colleagues. She looked up at Jarrod. "We serve breakfast at the same time every day. You are welcome to join us anytime, my lord."

  Jarrod straightened to his full height and gave Gillian a crooked smile. "You and Colin are newlyweds," he reminded her. "And I don't want to wear out my welcome."

  "You needn't worry about that possibility." Gillian returned his smile. "For it will never happen."

  Jarrod frowned.

  "I'll always make time for my husband." Her cheeks turned a becoming shade of pink. "And I shall always welcome his friends into our home whatever the hour or circumstance." She looked Jarrod in the eye. "Especially you, Lord Shepherdston, for you and His Grace, the Duke of Avon, are my husband's dearest friends. You sheltered Colin and provided him with a means of providing for his family when his father would not. You have been the most loyal of friends and are as beloved to me and to Colin as any brother…"

  Jarrod stared down at the floor as the color rose in his face.

  He was blushing. Jarrod, who never reacted with anything except wit, cynicism, or anger, was blushing. Realizing that he'd just witnessed a unique occurrence, Colin moved to assist his wife as Gillian pushed her chair away from the table and stood up. "And now that I have unwittingly embarrassed you with my gratitude and my profession of affection, I shall leave you and Colin to speak in private." She turned her face up to receive Colin's brief kiss, then patted Jarrod's sleeve as she walked by.

  Colin watched as his wife left the room, then turned to Jarrod. "Any word as to Sussex's whereabouts?"